Diesels more popular than hybrids? (. . . except for . . .)

But there isn't enough land, certainly not over here and not for the millions of vehicles using billions of gallons of it each year.

 

If diesel exhaust of CURRENT diesel vehicles is so "toxic", why did lab tests show that rats exposed to diesel exhaust so concentrated that it had to be cooled before entering the exposure chamber to keep the ambient temperature tolerable for the rats have no health effects different from rats in the exposure chamber with HEPA-filtered room air?

http://www.healtheffects.org/Pubs/Press%20Release%20ACES%202015.pdf

 

Cos there's a big difference between a nicely serviced engine running in a lab under perfect conditions, and quite another when in the real world accelerating hard to keep up with traffic.

Diesels far dirtier than we thought
Emission tests 'substantially underestimate' pollution pumped out by diesels - Telegraph
Diesel fumes more damaging to health than petrol engines | UK news | The Guardian

 

The test cycle used was a "real-world" 16-hour test cycle especially designed for the Advance Collaborative Emissions Study (ACES), not the test cycle used for emissions testing.

It should be noted that the engine used for this health study was a 2007-compliant engine (DPF & EGR). The 2010-compliant engines (DPF & SCR) are far cleaner still.

http://www.healtheffects.org/Pubs/ACES-Phase2-Final-Press-Release-120413.pdf

 

The diesel was not able to asphixiate rats in 16 hours.

Congrats

 

Concentrated diesel exhaust was not able to cause cancer or any of over 100 other heath effects after 80 hours/week exposure for 30 months.

 

By the way, I think it was GC who provided a link that showed engine-out gasoline exhaust (i.e., non-functioning cat) had 50 times more carbon monoxide, 30 times more hydrocarbons, and 3 times more NOx than engine-out diesel exhaust.

Vehicle Emissions | Air Pollution | City Diesel | LPG | CNG (graphic in middle of page)

So if poor maintenance is an issue in Europe, these more potential harm from poorly maintained petrol cars than poorly-maintained diesel cars.

 

If you think that makes diesel exhaust safe for humans, I have a bridge to sell you.

One study I read set the safe ambient Nox at 0.6 ppm
I'm not positive I am doing this arithmetic correctly .. but if
A new "clean" diesel emits about 30 mg per mile,
and in that mile, about 300 grams of CO2
that works out to 1:10,000 or 100 ppm

 

Diesels have always produced far lower CO emissions than a gas engine.
Idling in a garage, the NOx from a current diesel should be about the same as a gasoline car's.
If the the Prius was actually tested for particulates, it would emit more than the diesels with DPF, which have been in use for over a decade.

 

And you guys all say this from the US where diesel cars just don't exist in any significant number.

I have to live in Europe where 50% of cars are diesel and our cities stink.

One thing is a lab test, another is living in the real world.

 

Thing is that it is more efficient than ethanol and has higher energy density. And if you use something Jatropha you can utilize desert lands not used for anything, and slow down and even reverse desert expansion.

 

Rats and mice have been used in inhalation studies as long as I can remember. LD50s and LC50s are all based on rat/mice inhalation studies.

It may very well be that undiluted exhaust has concentrations of NOx that high. That of course becomes highly diluted even if you're right behind a diesel bus for example. No one is ever going to breathe undiluted diesel exhaust. What's the concentration of CO in the undiluted exhaust of a modern gasser? Also, not all NOx is NO2 ( NOx = NO + NO2). NO2 is the toxic component of NOx; NO is relatively benign from a human toxicology perspective.

If you'd read the full ACES Phase 3 study (http://pubs.healtheffects.org/getfile.php?u=1039), you'll see that the lab rats were exposed to three concentrations of NO2 in the lifetime study; 0.1 ppm in the "low exposure" chamber, 0.8 ppm in the "intermediate exposure" chamber, and 4.2 ppm in the "high exposure" chamber. The ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for NO2 in the U.S. is 0.053 ppm, so ALL of the chambers in the study exceeded the NO2 NAAQS. The "high exposure" chamber had NO2 levels almost 100 times higher than the NAAQS.

By the way, there are no areas in the U.S. that are in non-attainment with the NO2 NAAQS and haven't been since 1998 when Tier 1 was still in effect.

 

There are "real-world" tests of petrol cars that are not so good also. For example, a presentation at the U.S. EPA Workshop on Ultrafine Particles (February 2015) showed that direct-injection petrol engines (GDI) can emit up to 8,000 times more ultrafine particles at start-up than a diesel equipped with DPF as measured in the real world. This is especially a concern for GDI vehicles equipped with start/stop. Are there any manufacturers that are not going to GDI?

In the Final Rule of Tier 3, EPA stated that the "real-world" emissions of PM from petrol vehicles are higher than it previously thought, based on a "real-world" test it conducted in Kansas City, and a PM limit has been set for PM in the US06 test cycle under Tier 3 (10 mg/mile).

Kittleson (University of Minnesota) showed that "real-world" particle number (PN) emissions from modern petrol vehicles can approach and even exceed those from uncontrolled diesels (i.e., no DPF) in some common driving conditions (high speed/loads, cold ambient temperatures).

There's also this from Germany...

(Translated by Google Translate)

http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/deutsche-umwelthilfe-gefaehrliche-benziner-mit-direkteinspritzung-a-930663.html


Europe has given GDI an order-of-magnitude leeway for PN emissions from GDI until 2017 from the standard that diesels have had to meet since 2011 (Euro 5b). Why does there seem to be no concern about these higher PN emissions from petrol?

 

Ah from Germany, home of the diesel car manufacturing lobby. Show me something from Japan or Switzerland or somewhere else civilised and not got a vested interest in diesel - ie Germany or France.

 

I did, the U.S. (three examples).

Do you think the U.S. has some vested interest in diesel cars?

 

No doubt, if GDI is as dirty as diesel or worse, it has a big problem.

 

If we had used the same level of emission controls on gasoline that have been used on diesel ones, our air quality would be just as bad. Without some type of fair encouragement, diesels, or any old car, can remains on the road for a long time.

 

TORQUE has to be written in capital letters, what for?

By the way, this is a Prius site, hybrid makes more sense than diesel in passenger cars, as Europe air problems have shown us.

Good luck for your incredible cars, for funny people. Mine is a regular hybrid, for normal people!